Most of my android tablets (a70 froyo, a101 ics, etc) have started to have a lot of trouble getting google play store to work. It says can't get a connection, yet I have a good wifi and internet connectivity in other apps. If I tap the playstore button to retry connection about a dozen times, it will work.

All I can think of is I had updated router security from wpa to wpa2, and maybe the older tablets get bogged down handling this? Or I had tried to shut down the auto synching of gmail, and maybe that gave some side effects to make playstore intermittent?

WPA2-PSK CCMP is fine on my A43IT (Froyo stock 2.4.83 rooted dual boots with CyanogenMod Gingerbread) and A28IT (stock Archos 2.4.83) on wireless N. I don't have Google Play on my tablets any more but I think you need to make sure background data and Auto-sync are both enabled so that Google can slurp up all your data more smoothly and be ready when you open Play.

Your router ought to be able to show your tablets' up and down speeds, which channel you are using, and if there is a problem with dropped packets. Apps like WiFi Analyzer (I got it from F-Droid) can show you if the channel is congested and it even suggests better channels to use. If you have the choice between G and N then choose N, the gen8 devices are fine on an N network with decent signal strength (they only ever report 54 Mbps connection but that seems to be a UI bug as my router running openwrt shows they can connect at a nominal 65 Mbps).

There is always the chance that Google just start declining to support unofficial devices. I doubt they have any good reason to test against the wide variety of unofficial devices which shouldn't be connecting to Play.

Thanks, that gave food for thought. Bottom line is that a reset of my dslmodem helps a lot, for a while. I had updated it's firmware recently and couldn't get it's modem to talk to it's wifi, so tacked on a cheapo refurb netgear wifi unit that works and has newer security.

Wifi analyzer tells me my signal spikes way down about every 10 seconds, even close to the device. Could even be a power problem in the building according to other evidence. But the modem seems to need a recycle almost daily or else throughput bogs way down. I use speed test apps to confirm throughput vs my theoretical max.

I could find the dropped packet info on my old setup, but not on my new dumbed down interface. I got inssider app before they started charging for it, and it suggests to me a different wifi channel than all the other apps do. I think it is correct because only one channel has less than 20 on the same channel and 10 on overlapping channels. Even that didn't work until I changed mine to a narrow "neighbor friendly" broadcast option.

What I should probably do is demand a new modem from my dsl company (mine came from a long defunct company) or get a better wifi router which matches the strong signals from my neighbors.

I had endless trouble with my ISP supplied router (a poor combo ADSL2+ Modem/router) which was so crappy it could only reliably support one wireless cient at a time, couldn't do port mapping, had a web UI locked down by the ISP with the intention of forcing customers to use ISP's own DNS etc etc so I bought my own. Then the ISP changed their exchange equipment to Broadcom DSLAM stuff that was incompatible with my own stuff which used a TI adsl modem. It's very hard to troubleshoot this kind of thing because it's usually impossible to speak to anyone at an ISP who has a brain, gives a crap, and knows what is going on. It can get expensive to try different kit. I finally gave in and time warped back to the 1990s in that I now once again have separate devices for modem and router. The modem can be any old thing that is compatible (even an ISP supplied router so long as it supports bridge mode - i.e. works as modem only and can use one ethernet port as a pass through to another device) and the router is where you should spend your money to get what you want. I get the idea you are in UK. There are lots of so-called cable routers available at low cost. These are not really "cable only" devices, it's just that they don't have an adsl modem. They work fine in conjunction with a dedicated adsl modem and are usually very good value. I bought on ebay a used TP-Link TL-WDR3600 so now I have a wireless router with gigabit ethernet, nominal 600 Mbps dual channel wifi, plenty of RAM and it's rock solid stable running openwrt. And if my ISP dicks me about with compatibility issues or if a firmware upgrade bricks my modem I can just change the modem - it's cheap or even free - and the carefully configured and reliable router just carries on regardless. Same if I move house or change ISP - stick the crappy recommended/required modem at the front and continue to use my own router behind it.

Yeah, I think I did a similar approach as you here in the USA. My terminology may be wrong, but I tacked on a $10 refurb wifi router to my borked dsl modem. The so-called "maxrange" wifi box turned out to be the lowest range model and 5 years old, but at least it works. Recently Cnet or somebody posted a video on the best routers under $100 and mentioned some really good new ones discounted to $30... ouch!

So my trouble with playstore response seems to be only on tablets with no more than 1mhz, and when my modem gets slow and needs a reboot. It doesn't seem to be wifi router trouble, in spite of it's spikey dropouts, because a reboot doesn't help. My speed test app shows 99% of theoretical local dsl speed in the wee hours, about 75% in daytime, and maybe 5% when it gets stuck. Local dsl max speed capability isn't that fast compared to wifi which isn't normally the gating factor.

So bottom line is, I guess the playstore problem is an early warning that I should reboot the 10 year old dsl modem that I borked with new firmware. I get the same clue from a laptop that takes forever to load yahoo pages. If too lazy to get new equipment, I could install a timer that briefly shuts off and on power to the modem every night.